Scene and Heard: Scene's News Blog

Daylong Drawing Event Set for CMA on Sunday

As the Cleveland Museum of Art continues its centennial celebration, the museum hosts a free, daylong, community-wide drawing event this weekend. Draw Together: A Big Draw Event is part of the Big Draw Festival, a worldwide, month-long celebration of drawing. Approximately 400,000 people participated last year across all seven continents, and this year is expected to be even bigger and better. Although the Big Draw Festival lasts all month, the CMA’s event will take place for one day only – from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. this Sunday, Oct. 9.

“Draw Together at the Cleveland Museum of Art is an event where all types of people can share the joy of drawing,” says Seema Rao, director of intergenerational learning at the Cleveland Museum of Art. “They will be able to draw from collection artworks, see how local artists can be inspired by the collection and make wildly creative works of their own. It will include everything from traditional still life drawing to robots drawing, which complements the theme of this year’s Big Draw Festival. Don't be worried you can’t draw––everyone who has doodled has drawn.”

The afternoon also includes an opportunity to “learn alongside the masters,” with the museum’s teaching artists helping guide guests as they draw in the galleries, including the Armor Court. Guests can also participate in drawing games in the museum’s atrium.

The Big Draw Festival began as a one-day celebration of drawing in the United Kingdom in October of 2000 with 180 partner organizations. For the past 15 years, the annual, month-long festival has encouraged over three million people to draw. Last year’s festival featured over 1,000 partner organizations. The event has inspired two world records: longest drawing in the world (one kilometer) and the greatest number of people drawing simultaneously (over 7,000). For more information on other events, visit thebigdraw.org.